Empowering sea ports with renewable energy under the enabling framework of the energy communities

Port operations, essential for global trade, are energy-intensive and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Transitioning to renewable energy can reduce their carbon footprint and enhance resilience and sustainability. Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) offer a collaborative and decentralized framework for integrating renewable energy into port facilities. However, port authorities and maritime stakeholders face challenges in design, implementation, and operations, particularly in estimating outcomes and benefits. Understanding the REC framework is crucial for port industry to address current priorities. This study provides guidelines for stakeholders on implementing single or multiple energy communities in ports. An energy and economic model, based on EU regulations and national laws, assesses the viability of RECs in ports. The model considers port energy usage and various production systems, such as solar and marine renewable energy technologies, and energy storage in a hybrid configuration to estimate variable demand profiles and explore renewable energy integration into the port energy system. The numerical model simulates virtual energy exchanges among multiple energy users and investigates the feasibility of shared energy projects in ports. The research comprehensively analyses technological and economic scenarios and examines the convenience of multiple virtual energy end-user aggregations. Results indicate that increasing renewable energy complementarity and rational system design can cover up to 60 % of total port energy demand and achieve 90 % renewable energy self-consumption. Incentives ensure a payback period under 6 years for large-scale hybrid energy systems and between 2 to 4 years for smaller power plants, highlighting significant financial benefits for voluntary members. Batteries enable higher renewable penetration in the port energy system, up to 15 %, with moderate economic impact. The virtual self-consumption scheme is promising, as economic incentives shift focus to design aspects that increase local renewable energy utilization. Policies encouraging the creation of multiple energy communities in ports can lower life cycle costs, with multiple virtual aggregations leading to €6M lower costs over 20 years compared to a single energy community comprising all main port users.